At The Seattle Fat Mall, plus-size shopping is joyful

Dakota Joiner is in the market for a new body harness. At Chub Rub Clothing, those bold, strappy accessories come in black, shimmery pastel blue and rainbow ombre. 

“It’s really hard to find plus-size, good-fitting harnesses,” he said. “So, I really kind of want one of those. I just can’t decide. Like, I do like the multi-color.” 

Dakota takes one off the rack to see how it looks with a crop top he picked out. 

“I think I’m gonna do this one. Mom, what do you think?” he said. 

Dakota and his mom Brandy Joiner are fresh from the airport, here in Seattle on vacation from Chicago. Brandy said their first stop had to be the new Seattle Fat Mall.  

“We heard about this from a friend and I was like, ‘How as a fatty could I not want to come here?’” Brandy said. 

The Seattle Fat Mall launched in the city’s downtown business district in April. As part of a partnership with the city, its temporary and rent-free home is a vacant office space livened up with neon paint and rainbow tinsel. The mall hosts a dozen permanent and pop-up vendors selling everything from plus-size lingerie and curated resale clothing to jewelry and art that celebrates larger bodies.

“It’s so hard to find, like, fashionable fat clothes,” Dakota said. “I feel like everything is the same cut, or just a graphic tee. I like to be a bit more styled.”

For Dakota and Brandy, a trip to the mall usually means scouring the single plus-size rack in the back of every store, before eventually giving up and looking online. Here, they’re finding bold-patterned miniskirts, sparkly cut-out halter tops and one-of-a-kind vintage gems in a range of sizes. 

“There aren’t enough of these spaces for fat people, there just are not,” Brandy said. “Most of the population is over a size 16 in the United States, but we just kind of all get overlooked.” 

The global market for plus-size clothing is valued at over $300 billion and growing. Some fashion brands understand that and have taken steps to be more size-inclusive, but shopping for those plus-sized clothes can still be frustrating. Particularly at brick-and-mortar stores where people with larger bodies might have a hard time finding a variety of styles that fit. 

The Fat Mall aims to offer a shopping experience tailor-made for those customers. Their bodies are accommodated and celebrated everywhere from the spacious dressing rooms to the plus-size mannequins in the alterations shop to the size-inclusive chair in the pop-up tattoo studio. Even the tarot reader’s cards feature illustrations of people with larger bodies.  

“We’ve seen some people outside yell, like, ‘What’s a fat mall?’” said Candace Frank, one of the mall’s co-creators. “And we’re like, ‘It’s a mall for fat people! It’s really self-explanatory.’” 

Frank is the fashion designer behind Chub Rub Clothing. Frank and her business partner Kwame Phillips-Solomon dreamed up the Fat Mall in collaboration with sisters Alyss and Amber Selig, creators of another plus-size clothing retailer The Curvy Cactus. 

“Curvy Cactus got this space through Seattle Restored,” said Alyss Selig, referring to a downtown revitalization program that repurposes empty storefronts. “We were talking about ways that we can utilize the space, and the idea was born to fill it with fat-friendly vendors and to create this joyful, in-person shopping experience.” 

The goal is to re-write the frustrating and sometimes painful experiences that people with larger bodies might associate with shopping trips. 

“We all grew up going to the mall, of course, but if you’re a fat kid, you were probably buying jewelry and shoes while your friends were buying clothes,” Frank said. “We’re healing that old experience with a space where it’s all focused on us.” 

The mainstream fashion industry has been slow to meet the needs of plus-size customers because it values exclusivity, according to Tigress Osborn with the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. 

“Brands have an image they’re trying to create, and they don’t think fat people go with that image. So, they’ll gamble on losing fat customers’ dollars because they think it helps them get somebody else’s,” Osborn said. “That is obviously an attitude that is underwritten with anti-fatness, but we live in an anti-fat culture.”

But Osborn called that gamble short-sighted and said pent-up demand for affirming plus-size retail spaces proves that. 

In one of the Fat Mall’s resale shops, Billie Grant was looking for some additions to her autumn wardrobe.

“Look at this. That is wonderful,” she said, pulling a forest green sweater dress off the rack. “It also has buttons all the way down. I like that detail.” 

Grant is a savvy thrifter, but said tracking down clothes in her size and style usually requires her to watch for occasional pop-up plus-size resale events and clear her schedule to attend. 

“The hardest thing that I have to deal with is how much time I’m spending looking for things that will make my body feel good,” Grant said. “And that’s not happening here.” 

Grant added the sweater dress to an armful of clothes she was taking to the fitting room, including a pair of jeans and an acid-wash denim skirt. 

“It’s not necessarily about actually buying the thing. It’s just about seeing that someone cared enough to curate it,” Grant said. “That’s really different.” 

But people are buying plenty of things at the Seattle Fat Mall. Its creators said sales are strong enough across its vendors that they’re looking into renting a permanent retail space once its partnership with the city comes to an end in December. 

“People really want to come to the mall. We’ve literally had people fly into town just to come shop here,” Frank said. “There definitely is money left on the table when it comes to plus size consumers. Like, no doubt at all.”  

Frank said what the Fat Mall is doing shouldn’t be subversive. People in larger-bodies want to feel good while they shop. They have money in their pockets. Businesses just have to give them a place to spend it.